SaaS Startups

Full Circle Insights is a B2B SaaS company founded by Bonnie Crater and three co-founders in 2012 that helps marketing teams measure and track campaign impact on pipeline and revenue. Built on the Salesforce platform with just $22,000 in initial capital and sweat equity, the company has grown to $4M ARR with 150 enterprise customers, achieving a 90% renewal rate and a six-month CAC payback period through event-driven sales and partnerships.

Youths is a location-based mobile advertising company founded in 2008 that helps global brands target consumers at specific geographic locations like airports and retail outlets. By 2016, the bootstrapped company had grown to over $1M in annual revenue with a 15-person team based in Vietnam, serving approximately 30 agency customers through a CPM arbitrage model and partnership-driven sales strategy across 60+ countries.

MobFox is a mobile in-app supply-side platform (SSP) acquired by Amadame Media Group for approximately $12 million in 2014. The platform connects app publishers with demand-side platforms and advertisers, helping developers monetize their apps while optimizing ad delivery through SDK-based solutions. In 2015, MobFox processed $18 million in gross ad spend (keeping 17-20% in revenue), and by 2016 more than doubled that to $36 million, working with 20-30,000 publishers and 180+ DSPs.

Demand Jump is a SaaS platform that gives marketers 100% visibility into their competitive digital ecosystem and qualified traffic sources. Founded by Christopher Day and Sean Swigman (former CMO of Overstock.com) in February 2015, the company grew from $165k first-year revenue in 2016 to an $85k MRR run rate approaching $1M ARR by 2017, with 22 customers and 89% annual retention.

ConverSocial is an enterprise SaaS platform that helps large consumer brands deliver customer service through social media and mobile messaging channels. Founded by Josh March (who previously sold i-Platform to a UK agency in 2012), the company has raised $20 million in capital and serves approximately 250 enterprise customers including Google, Sprint, Hertz, and Hyatt Hotels with ARR exceeding $10 million.

Wealth Factory, founded by Garrett Gunderson in 2006, is a virtual family office for entrepreneurs doing $1-10M in revenue that helps them optimize cash flow and keep more of their earnings. After refocusing the company following a tragic plane crash that killed two co-founders, Gunderson built a consulting-based model where clients pay $10,000-$150,000 for comprehensive financial advisory services. The firm limits new client acquisition to 10 per month and focuses on deep customer intimacy with around 125-250 clients.

Yeti Data is an enterprise SaaS platform that creates a virtual data warehouse unifying customer touchpoints and providing AI-driven actionable insights. Founded by Victor Sherba in 2014 with $1.5M in convertible note funding, the company spent 2-3 years in deep development before launching go-to-market efforts in earnest last year. With less than half a dozen customers paying $250K-$500K annually, Yeti Data is approaching $1M ARR and seeking a Series A at a $15-20M pre-money valuation.

Muscat is a marketing performance management SaaS platform founded in 2014 by Oscar Nelson and a co-founder. After bootstrapping for a year with $200k in personal savings, they launched a beta product in 2015 with $100k in revenue, then grew 5x to $500k in 2016. By mid-2017, they reached $100k MRR with 60 customers and a $25k average annual contract value, having raised $1.2M from angels and seed funds.

M-Sites, founded by Scott East in 2003, provides data management and performance reporting services for large marketing departments. The company operates on a hybrid SaaS and professional services model, charging based on data volume (rows) integrated through APIs, FTP, or email, with free platform licenses to drive adoption and increase data integration opportunities. With less than 20 clients but an impressive $250,000 average contract value, sub-5% annual churn, and nearly $3.5M ARR, M-Sites has achieved strong unit economics and healthy gross margins (80%+ on platform, 70% on professional services) while remaining bootstrapped and largely relying on word-of-mouth growth.

Ripple is an enterprise blockchain solution for global payments, founded by early Bitcoin advocates who pivoted from pure cryptocurrency to practical financial interoperability. Led by Stefan Thomas (CTO and early team member), Ripple has raised $94 million and grown to 170+ people, positioning itself as the "Zapier for global payments" by enabling banks and payment providers to interoperate seamlessly.

Socido is a B2B SaaS platform that helps B2B marketers find prospects on social media showing real-time behavioral interest and engage them through automated social and email nurturing campaigns. Founded by Asim Badshah (formerly of Uptown Treehouse agency), the company is backed by Techstars Ventures, Vulcan Capital, and Divergent Ventures. Currently at $2.5M ARR (~$200k MRR) with a 20-person team, Socido has shifted from outbound/ABM to a product-led growth model using free trials to build pipeline, focusing on SMB/mid-market B2B companies.

Conga is a SaaS company specializing in data management, document generation, and contract management for Salesforce users. Founded in 2006 and joined by CEO Matt Schiltze in 2015, the company has grown to serve over 9,000 paying customers across 140+ countries with hundreds of thousands of seats, achieving 200% bookings growth in the prior year and 100% expected growth in the current year, with industry-leading negative churn and gross margins of 85-87%.

Flash Talking is an ad tech SaaS platform founded in 2000 that uses real-time data to personalize digital advertising creative across multiple formats (video, desktop, mobile, OTT). The company generates revenue through incremental CPM charges on ad delivery, with 40 clients accounting for 80% of revenue including major advertisers like Walmart, American Express, Verizon, and AT&T. Operating at scale, Flash Talking delivers 15-40 billion impressions monthly and has been profitable since inception with 280 global employees.

Q is a SaaS platform launched in 2015 that provides hand-curated content suggestions for social media users and helps content creators promote their work through Qpromote. The company grew to 5,000 paying customers largely through an AppSumo lifetime deal that generated $30,000-$40,000 upfront, though only about 300 customers were later converted to recurring monthly plans. Currently operating at ~$25,000 MRR with 8% monthly churn, they're scaling through influencer partnerships and just beginning paid acquisition.

Geniebelts is a Copenhagen-based SaaS platform built by six co-founders from diverse backgrounds to solve communication and collaboration challenges in the construction industry. Starting with a free platform that attracted 10,000 users in 2014, the company now serves nearly 200 paying customers across 40+ countries, growing from €10,000 MRR in December 2016 to €100,000+ MRR by late 2017 with a 149% negative churn rate. The company raised €4 million in external funding a year prior to this interview and achieved a 7-8 month payback period with €4,500 customer acquisition cost.

Vuture is a marketing automation platform purpose-built for enterprise professional service firms (law firms, accounting firms). Founded by Robin Stevens in 2007 and still bootstrapped after 10 years, the company has grown to $10M ARR with 300 enterprise customers through high-touch, low-volume direct sales. The company ranked #16 on the SaaS 1000 list for staff growth, maintains exceptionally low churn (~0.3% monthly), and achieves 85%+ gross margins.

Popton is a lead capture platform for creating customized pop-ups and overlays, built by co-founders Gal and Tomer (both 28) who met in high school. Launched officially two months prior to this interview in early 2017, they bootstrapped the product using revenue from their profitable digital agency ECPM ($30k/month). They grew to 72 paying customers with $2,300 MRR by leveraging their agency network and content marketing community.

Rubicon Project is a programmatic advertising platform that automates the buying and selling of digital advertising inventory across publishers, demand-side platforms, and agencies. Operating as a publicly traded company, it processes over 1 billion in advertising spend annually and takes approximately 20-25% of transaction value as revenue, generating around $250 million in annual revenue. Joe Pruse, Chief Revenue Officer, has been with the company for over 9 years and credits the company's success to rapid innovation, including technologies like header bidding and the Intogal acquisition, which continue to maintain competitive advantage in a fast-evolving industry.

Coupa is a B2B SaaS platform that helps enterprises optimize their spending through procurement, invoice processing, expense management, and supplier management. Founded in 2009 and taken public in October 2016, the company has grown to serve over 530 customers including major enterprises like Airbus, Rolls Royce, Nike, Uber, and Lyft, generating approximately $140 million in annual recurring revenue with 40%+ year-over-year growth and exceptional retention metrics.

Xsella is a cloud-based SaaS platform launched in 2011 that helps service businesses (architects, accountants, designers, consultants, agencies) manage operations through automation and integration with existing tools. With $11M in total funding, 60 employees across Sydney and San Francisco, and over 1,000 customers, Xsella has achieved strong unit economics with ~$480k-$4.8M monthly revenue, 80% daily active user engagement, and 20-30% year-one expansion revenue with negative 10% net revenue churn.